The Walking Dead Game -vs- Heavy Rain

I have read many times posts about people comparing Heavy Rain to TWD and I think it is legitimate.

If we compare the 2 games they are very similiar: both games have are heavily story driven, strong character development, minor focussed on gameplay mostly quicktime events, many choices.

Now if I compare both games I have to give telltale 1 pluspoint: I got more attached to the characters than I did in Heavy Rain. But if we compare choices, and IMPACT of choices TWD falls behind majorly. None of the choices make any difference besides some dialoguechanges or other temporary effects that are NOT "profound and lasting" (like advertised) but they have no influence on the story and no impact on the outcome whatsoever. Heavy rain on the other hand has like.... nearly 20 different endings and results depending on your choices. I think there are 17 different endings alone. This game has truly profound and lasting consequences to your choices - unlike TWD where it seems you only have "the illusion of choice".

Now, I see why that many different endings might not be possible for Telltale, as it would be near impossible and ludicrously expensive to start a 2nd season with that many endings, but at least give us 3 or so different results depending on what we did throughout our game? Or anything at all? I played this game 3 times, with 3 times totally different choices yet everything plays out the same and ends in only 1 ending.

After I played Heavy Rain I immediately played again, and the result was COMPLETELY different. My choices had MAJOR IMPACT. In fact I played it 6 or 7 times and every time it played out differently. The characters ended up totally different and the endings were completely different depending on my choices.

Now, with TWD after only my 2nd playthrough (opposite of 1st playthrough) I noticed there is no point in the choices. Everything feels so minor and temporary I have never seen a single choice that was profound and lasting.

Now, TWD was one of the better games I have played in 2012 due to story and character development. But gameplay and choices are rather poor.

Bottom Line is I wished they would take a route further down to Heavy Rain, where your choices actually altered the outcome.

I loved Heavy Rain, but i enjoyed the Walking Dead even better. I don't care about the choices part so i won't comment on that, but regarding the emotional aspects...

There's just so much more at stake in the Walking Dead than in Heavy Rain. With Heavy Rain, you're pretty much dealing with one threat, one single killer. Even if you don't catch this guy, the rest of the world will live on. The characters are willingly putting themselves in danger to rescue the child(not disrespecting that, of course) and can back down from it anytime if they so choose.

With the Walking Dead, no one has that luxury. Everyone everywhere you go can die anywhere at anytime. No one has a choice to just walk away, everyone is forced to fight for their lives and struggle to survive every single day. They don't just lose their children, they lose their entire family and their friends, sometimes even being forced to kill those loved ones that they failed to protect. They suffer tragedy every waking moment of their lives. You can't sit back and relax, you can't play at the park with your family or friends, you're never in a fully safe environment. You'll instead spend all of your time wondering who's going to die next. And that made me care for the characters and their struggles more than Heavy Rain.

Imagine a scene where a father of two watches as his first born son rips the intestines out of his second son, then they both rise and kill his wife, and then him. That would be devastating...

@Mornai said: I loved Heavy Rain, but i enjoyed the Walking Dead even better. I don't care about the choices part so i won't comment on that, but regarding the emotional aspects...

There's just so much more at stake in the Walking Dead than in Heavy Rain. With Heavy Rain, you're pretty much dealing with one threat, one single killer. Even if you don't catch this guy, the rest of the world will live on. The characters are willingly putting themselves in danger to rescue the child(not disrespecting that, of course) and can back down from it anytime if they so choose.

With the Walking Dead, no one has that luxury. Everyone everywhere you go can die anywhere at anytime. No one has a choice to just walk away, everyone is forced to fight for their lives and struggle to survive every single day. They don't just lose their children, they lose their entire family and their friends, sometimes even being forced to kill those loved ones that they failed to protect. They suffer tragedy every waking moment of their lives. You can't sit back and relax, you can't play at the park with your family or friends, you're never in a fully safe environment. You'll instead spend all of your time wondering who's going to die next. And that made me care for the characters and their struggles more than Heavy Rain.

Imagine a scene where a father of two watches as his first born son rips the intestines out of his second son, then they both rise and kill his wife, and then him. That would be devastating...

I love the walking dead universe, love the comics, love the show, for most part I enjoyed the game, in fact I still play it even though it is hit and miss as to whether or not my choices will successfully carry over from one episode to the next. Overall I had a better experience playing Heavy Rain though. Even though I had a good ending I thought about the game for a long time after playing it, where as the walking dead was memorable for me for all the wrong reasons. I remember feeling more anger when the game ended than sadness.

The big difference to me was, that I wasn't too much involved into Ethan Mars' story, I barely knew Shawn (the kid) and didn't really worry much about him, but what drew me in were the crazy tasks the killer gave us, and the great presentation. And of course the great fact, that there were no game-over deaths, if a character died, he was death - deal with it.

In the walking dead the characters were awesome, and every death felt hard on me, even Larry's, even the Stranger's, though I hated him. Why? Because they felt so real, due to the top notch voice acting, and great writing, great job TellTale! Only the limited impact my decisions had were one little thing I didn't like, but I understand why it had to be that way, nonetheless, to me The Walking Dead is the "better" game, depends on people's preferences though.

Here is a pretty good video comparing the two and explaining what TWD did right that Heavy Rain failed at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6gC2MHXIH0 [spoilers for both games of course]! Personally I haven't played Heayv Rain but I have watched a whole playthrough of it and I think the game has a very interesting story it just fails at making you care a lot about the people in it. Needless to say, the game was still good. TWD however is much much better.

Heavy Rain is among my favorite games, and I liked it a bit better than TWD.

I don't care for the different endings that HR had, I just liked the multiple quick timed action scenes in it. It had you press different buttons while turning the analog stick in a unique way, as opposed to WD's quick time events, which had you continuously tap a button, and then press another random button after.

As for characters, I cared for HR's lineup the same I did for TWD.

WD was definitely the better adventure game between the two, as it had you take different options to explore the environment: (Look at axe, take axe, etc.) In HR, you could only perform one function with the objects in the environment. But I'm more of an action game fan than an adventure game one.

Both games had a dark narrative and story tone, as well as depressing endings (If you screw up in HR). The bad endings in HR still give me the chills every time I see them.

@Zeruis said: Heavy Rain is among my favorite games, and I liked it a bit better than TWD.

I don't care for the different endings that HR had, I just liked the multiple quick timed action scenes in it. It had you press different buttons while turning the analog stick in a unique way, as opposed to WD's quick time events, which had you continuously tap a button, and then press another random button after.

As for characters, I cared for HR's lineup the same I did for TWD.

WD was definitely the better adventure game between the two, as it had you take different options to explore the environment: (Look at axe, take axe, etc.) In HR, you could only perform one function with the objects in the environment. But I'm more of an action game fan than an adventure game one.

Both games had a dark narrative and story tone, as well as depressing endings (If you screw up in HR). The bad endings in HR still give me the chills every time I see them.

I said this before and I'll say it again, I didn't like Heavy Rain as much as I should have. Plot was good, problem was the characters. Every single character I felt nothing towards besides complete indifference. Ethan in particular, the main fucking protagonist was just kind of... there. He felt more so like a bag of meat that the player uses to get around in rather than an actual character. I get it, the game tries to make you feel sorry for him but just doesn't work out because he feels fake and wasn't developed as a character (or at least not enough to make me actually care about him).

Meanwhile in The Walking Dead every single character I liked. Literally every character. They all felt real, and I actually loved / hated pretty much everyone. I didn't feel any indifference. Only character I remotely liked in Heavy Rain was Shelby... Until that very confusing, out of nowhere plot twist. You know the one. "He's doing it because like his shitty brother died or something," just give me a fucking break.

I said this before and I'll say it again, I didn't like Heavy Rain as much as I should have. Plot was good, problem was the characters. Every single character I felt nothing towards besides complete indifference. Ethan in particular, the main fucking protagonist was just kind of... there. He felt more so like a bag of meat that the player uses to get around in rather than an actual character. I get it, the game tries to make you feel sorry for him but just doesn't work out because he feels fake and wasn't developed as a character (or at least not enough to make me actually care about him).

I've read that Quantic Dream were forced to cut some parts of the game out due to release pressure or something, and i have seen some of the footage that didn't make the cut. It seems to expand on Ethan's troubles, so maybe that's part of why he seems so flat.